“But you—” I began, and she cut me off.
“Darling, I went to jail so you wouldn’t have to.”
Ninety-five students were arrested that day at Northwestern. My two friends Roger and Larry were among them. Despite the way the university hassled the arrested students for months with legal appearances, the charges against them were later dropped. The college president mentioned their activism with pride at our commencement address, saying that their degree of commitment reflected well on the university. Eventually, Nelson Mandela was not only a free man, but the president of his nation.
I made lifelong friends at Northwestern. I fell in love and learned heartbreak for the first time. I helped adapt my own fiction to video. I had two creative writing professors—Janet Desaulniers and Sheila Schwartz—who made me believe I was already a writer, not a writer-in-waiting. But within those good memories, I see gaps, so many wasted opportunities, so many people I never knew. I took classes from extraordinary black professors—historian Sterling Stuckey, late novelist Leon Forrest, Guyanese novelist and playwright Jan Carew—but I was invisible, too shy to strike up relationships with them, and too young to appreciate how important that would be.
Still, I graduated with only one true regret: I wished I could go back in time and change the outcome of the day of the anti-apartheid takeover, to paint myself as someone who was fearless and committed and would gladly sacrifice a good-bye meeting with a friend for the larger cause. But in the years since, I’ve come to feel cleansed of the guilt that followed me. I might not make the same choice today, but what had I done wrong? During that precious college time, I was enjoying myself, making friends I cared for deeply, and preparing myself for my coming career in the arts, where there were a few trails of my own I hoped I could blaze.
I went to jail so you wouldn’t have to, my mother told me.
My parents had given me a gift: I had the freedom to be a kid. I marveled at the magnitude of the gift I had been given, as I still do now, every day.
Eleven
PATRICIA STEPHENS DUE
“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”
—Maya Angelou
My life was so transformed by the fall of 1960, it’s a wonder I still recognized myself. One major change was on the home front. After eleven years of marriage, Mother and Daddy Marion were separated. Having two daughters in and out of jail had not helped their relationship, I’m sure. Despite the fact that the problems between them couldn’t be blamed on our civil rights activism, I have no doubt that Daddy Marion’s fear of reprisals and Mother’s heightened level of stress only contributed to their divorce. Mother and Daddy Marion had never been the kind of couple to argue openly in front of us when they had disagreements, but I had been aware that they had problems.
Mother never told us this at the time, but the main reason she had married Daddy Marion was to secure a father for her children. He had always known this, but he had hoped his love for her would win her heart and keep them together over time—and we could not have asked for a better father. But with Priscilla and me in college and Walter on his way to Morehouse in Atlanta, Mother decided she wanted a change. She had always been a very attractive woman, and there was no shortage of men who wanted to court her. Very soon after her divorce, she married a mortician named Leo Sears, who lived in Fort Myers, Florida, about 400 miles from Tallahassee. Daddy Marion remarried a former wife.
Unfortunately, my relationship with Daddy Marion was never the same after the divorce. Mother encouraged us to keep in touch, of course, as she had done with Daddy, but he began to withdraw from us. We might have withdrawn from him, too, but I firmly believe that his new wife felt threatened by his relationship with his stepchildren, so over time we became casualties of the breakup. We were not free to visit as much as we might have liked, and when we did, Daddy Marion asked us to come see him at his school rather than at home. I resented this, but I loved him, so we complied with his wishes. Once again, in some ways, I had lost a father. (Daddy Marion retired from the school system in 1971, then I lost him for good when he died in 1973.)
My childhood was behind me, in every sense, and I had made the transition to adulthood. My life had taken on its own hectic pace, and now I had the prospect of my own family on the horizon. By December 1960, I was also engaged.
His first name was John, but I will only refer to his last name with the initial “B.” John B. was a CORE volunteer I had met in New York, where Priscilla and I were loosely based during that summer of touring. John B. was a physics Ph.D. working in New York and, like most activists we met, he was extremely dedicated to the cause of equality. We met because he had been assigned to “entertain” me and Priscilla so we would not burn out during the tour. He told us we could go anywhere in New York we wanted. After some thought, I realized I wanted more than anything to go to Coney Island, and I had never been there. Now that would be a diversion! I was very excited.
Priscilla bowed out, having no interest in anything so childish. John B. did not seem so enthused himself, but he agreed to take me. When we got there, my eyes lit up when I saw the Cyclone, the monster roller-coaster that was the most famous in the world. I told John we had to ride it, and he agreed. What a ride! I must tell you, the Cyclone was worth the price of the ride. On a scale of one to ten, in terms of thrills, I rate it a ten-plus. I was so excited when the ride was over, I said I wanted to ride it again. My host, however, looked a little worse for the wear. “I’ll stand here and wait for you,” he said, “but I’m not going to ride that again.” In fact, I think he had to run to the men’s room.
That is my first memory of spending time with John B. I also remember him taking me to the zoo, where he listed scientific information about every animal we passed as if he were a tour guide. It’s not hard for me to imagine that, to others, John B. might have suited every stereotype of a scientist: very smart, quiet, a bit standoffish—but he wasn’t that way with me. When we were together, we laughed about simple things, and I got to know him. Our relationship continued after that summer, when he wrote to me at school. Our letters mostly discussed events related to the Movement, but he always began with his pet names for me, “Tallahassee Lassie” and “Black Princess.”
By Christmas break, John told me he wanted to come to Florida to ask my parents for my hand in marriage. That impressed me a great deal. Being an old-fashioned girl, I was pleased that he wanted to get engaged the “proper” way. Even in the midst of a courtship, though, I realized that a marriage between me and John B. would not be that simple. Those outings we had shared in New York would never have happened so openly in Tallahassee, nor in any other place in the South.
I was Negro, and John B. was white.
Coincidentally, he had gone to school in Tallahassee, too, but he left before I arrived. In late 1956, John B. had been suspended from Florida State University because he had invited three Negro foreign exchange students to a college-sponsored Christmas party for international students. Because of that and other activities, he was considered a radical. “The boy is sick and needs help,” FSU’s college president said of him at a 1957 meeting of the Florida governor’s Advisory Commission on Bi-Racial Problems,1 all because he had become involved in the Inter-Civic Council with some other FSU students, calling for an end to Jim Crow!
After two decades of segregation, I had never had any sort of romantic inclination toward a white man before I met John B. When I tried to envision men I considered attractive, I never thought of white men. If anything, I probably considered white men stiff and somewhat cold.
Yet I liked John B., and we shared the common vision for this country’s future that had become the driving force of my life, so I told him he could come to Florida to ask for my hand. Despite the fact that Mother and Daddy Marion were divorced by then—and that Daddy Marion was not even my biological father—John B. considered him my true father figure, as I did, so he set out for Belle Glade to talk to Daddy Marion first. I don’t h
ave a clear recollection of what Daddy Marion said, but I imagine his attitude was probably “Wait and see.” He may not have thought we were serious. We also spent several days at Mother’s house in Fort Myers. John B. wanted not only to ask for my hand officially, but he also wanted to spend a few days getting to know Mother. This, too, pleased me a great deal, since family is so important to me.
As I think back, Mother was unusually composed when I showed up on her doorstep with this dark-haired, mustached, baby-faced white scientist and he told her that he wanted to marry me. I was nervous. Unlike the last time, when I’d come with Billy H., praying she would release me from my obligation, I was older now and I wanted to get married. If she was horrified or amused, she didn’t show it. She sat at first with an inscrutable expression and let us have our say.
When we were finished, Mother thought for a moment and said, very matter-of-factly, “You know, I’ve been married twice before, and I can tell you that marriage is difficult even when you have everything in common, such as your religion and racial group.” Here she paused. “And the important thing is that you know an interracial marriage will be much more difficult. If you’ve discussed that, and you both think you’re mature enough to handle that more difficult marriage, then you have my blessing.” Mother had a great flair for handling things in the best way possible. If either of us had not given serious thought to the racial question, we would be forced to think about it now.
John B. and I looked at each other. We thought we knew what we were up against. In Florida in late 1960, a marriage between us would not even have been legal. We had talked about shielding ourselves by living in an academic setting, where people tended to be more open-minded, and John also had the opportunity to teach in London, where laws and customs were very different. Jackie Robinson (reluctantly, I believe) had told us he would host our wedding, if necessary. But with her own brand of finesse, Mother quietly planted seeds of doubt in my mind.
During that visit to Fort Myers, we got a taste of what our future lives together as a white husband and Negro wife might be like. We decided to go somewhere together to have a good time, but Fort Myers, of course, was completely segregated. As we tried to walk into a Negro nightclub, the man at the door, who was also Negro, stopped us in our tracks. “Hey, hey,” the man said gruffly, “ya’ll can’t come in here bringing this white man. What are you thinking? This is my club, and I’m not getting arrested.” Mother’s new husband, Mr. Sears, saved the day. Pretending to be surprised, Mr. Sears said, “Oh, man—you think he’s white? That’s my wife’s cousin! You know how that is.” And, true enough, there has always been so much mingling among the races, legal or not (and consensual or not), that Negroes come in all shades. The man at the door took a close look at Mother’s fair skin, glanced back at John B., then nodded. “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry. Go on in.”
The four of us laughed long and loud once we were inside. We discovered that John B. was not much of a dancer, which, according to stereotype anyway, would have betrayed his true lineage. We certainly got stares, but at least we had a few laughs getting in.
Joking aside, however, we had received a small preview of what was to come. John B. and I remained engaged, but we were not in a hurry to marry. He went back to New York, and I returned to FAMU’s campus. I was excited to be engaged, but there was also serious business to attend to. I was eager to concentrate on my classes again, and of course I wanted to remain involved in civil rights.
Somehow, word of my engagement to a white man had spread far beyond the campus of FAMU. Only a couple of months after we got engaged, the Negro newspaper publishers met in Tallahassee, and I found myself summoned to speak to them. I had no idea why they were calling me, but I assumed it had to do with the Movement.
It did, but not the way I had thought.
Once I arrived at the meeting, I went to a conference room where about a dozen publishers and journalists were assembled. With very stern faces, they put their cards on the table right away: “If you marry a white man,” they said, “your effectiveness in the Movement and your effectiveness as a voice for your people will be greatly compromised—if not totally deteriorated.” In days of old, this was probably very close to what it felt like to be called before the tribal council. “Why are you marrying a white man?” someone asked me point-blank.
Ordinarily, I don’t have the kind of personality where I allow strangers to ask me such pointed questions about my life. But because Negro newspapers had such an important function in the Movement, serving as an information source when white newspapers often would not print news about the unrest throughout the South, I respected this organization. And as an activist, I thought it was my duty to answer their questions.
“I’m in love with him,” I said.
“Is being in love enough to sacrifice all the good you can do for your people?”
“I can still work for my people,” I insisted, but they were not convinced. As I left that room, the mood was very somber, as if they were watching a fallen soldier.
Believe me, in those days it would have been newsworthy that a Negro activist was engaged to a white man. Negro newspapers printed their share of gossip, and they also saw themselves as community vanguards. (In his book Bearing the Cross, David J. Garrow points out that the Pittsburgh Courier issued a warning to Dr. Martin Luther King about traps to catch him during his suspected philandering as early as 1957, although it never named him directly: “A prominent minister in the Deep South, a man who has been making the headlines recently in his fight for civil rights, better watch his step.”)2 Just as the white newspapers very carefully chose what to print and what not to print, the Negro newspaper publishers had no intention of telling the world about my “fall from grace.” Although everyone knew, no one ever printed a word about it.
The doubts planted by Mother intensified after that meeting, although I never let on. I knew I had to be very honest with myself about my feelings for John B. and what I wanted for my future. Frankly, I wasn’t being very honest. Whether or not I wanted to admit it, I’d met another man—a Negro man who was also named John—I was also interested in.
The first time I saw John Dorsey Due Jr. was in the fall of 1960 at the Leon Theater in Tallahassee, where I worked at the concession stand. The Leon Theater was the theater that served Negroes, and the owner, a white man named Mr. Stone, was sympathetic to the civil rights cause, so he had offered me a job. One of the advantages of working at a movie theater was that I could get my friends in free as long as I asked permission. So Priscilla came one night with two male law students from FAMU. She’d invited along her date, Isiah “Ike” Williams III, and a new student named John Due, who only got an invitation, in truth, because he had a car. I had never seen John Due before that night, but he caught my eye.
John Due had recently enrolled in FAMU’s law school after attending Indiana University. Little did I know that while growing up, the Terre Haute native had always considered himself a “studious nerd,” and he had shed his eyeglasses for contact lenses to change his image from “Johnny,” as his friends and family had always called him. In fact, John tells me now, during an unsuccessful stint at Indiana University’s law school, he’d spent too much time socializing because he was trying to be “the Billy Eckstine of the period.” He had beautiful, smooth brown skin with a hint of a reddish tint from a Cherokee forebear, very pleasant features, and he stood six feet, two inches tall. From his build, he could have been an athlete.
I’d caught his attention, too. Because my eyes were sensitive to light following the teargassing incident, I was wearing dark glasses indoors, which probably made me look like I was trying to be fashionable. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was also wearing a snug-fitting black sweater and black boots, which also gave the appearance that I was much more sophisticated and worldly than I really was. I noticed John Due’s interested gaze. Although I couldn’t tell initially which of the two men was escorting Priscilla, she was doing her b
est to play matchmaker. “Come see Carmen Jones with us, Pat,” she said. “We’ll save you a seat. Find us when you’ve finished working.”
Well, I did want to see Carmen Jones. The all-black 1954 production starred Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. I knew Belafonte was very supportive of civil rights, since he’d been involved with a major sit-in fund-raiser during the time Priscilla and I were in jail, joined by other celebrities such as Sidney Poitier, Mahalia Jackson, Shelley Winters, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Diahann Carroll. Admittedly, while I had feelings for John B., I was interested in seeing more of John Due. To be honest, my immediate attraction for this man startled me. I already had a fiancé, after all. Why should I be interested in another man?
After the movie, Priscilla suggested that we all go somewhere else. John had planned to go home to study, but suddenly, he says now, he forgot all about studying. “Patricia was kind of short compared to the other ladies I got to know, but she was well-built,” he recalls. “She was a very attractive young lady.” Priscilla sat in the back seat with Ike Williams (the first time I realized he was supposed to be with her), and I sat up front with John while he drove. We ended up going somewhere to dance, and John danced with me.
John got a little fresh that first night. He tried to kiss me, which was considered very forward in the early 1960s, and I told him off. “What do you think you’re doing?” I said. “You don’t know me. I don’t expect some man I don’t know to be pawing all over me.”
Believe me, that was the last time John Due got fresh for a long time. But I wasn’t angry long, and I didn’t forget him. There were now two Johns in my life. I thought of them as Black John and White John. Black John and I became very good friends, especially since we both had an interest in civil rights. After our first few meetings, he realized that Priscilla and I were the two girls he had read about in Jet magazine at his kitchen table with his grandmother. As a member of the NAACP in Indianapolis, John had followed the news of the sit-ins and our jail-in, so he knew exactly who we were, even though he had initially forgotten our names. He had already lost a job once with Indiana’s Board of Corrections—where he had been the second Negro counselor at a state corrections facility—because he’d participated in a protest. (He’d won his job back under threat of lawsuit.) In fact, he’d come to FAMU precisely because he wanted to be in the thick of the civil rights movement in the South, leaving behind everything and everyone he knew. Rev. Steele had already invited him to speak before the Inter-Civic Council. But John had been warned by the dean of the law school, Dean Thomas Miller Jenkins, that he should not get arrested or do anything to jeopardize passing the bar exam, and his strategy was to get his law degree and become a lawyer so he could be more involved on the legal front of civil rights. John was five years older than I was, but he was one of the few people close to my age whom I could really talk to.
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